Tell It To The Bees ★★

Fiona Shaw’s 2009 novel, which centres on a forbidden romance in 1950s rural Scotland, is given a heartfelt but pedestrian onscreen adaptation. Interesting elements regarding toxic masculinity, sclerosed social mores and prejudice that festers from gossip are touched upon but are never convincingly developed, and the film never strikes a satisfying balance between post-war harshness and some late-in-the-day magical realism. This leads to a very clunky sequence that nearly sinks the entire film, given that the lyrical content wasn’t woven into the fabric of the story beforehand.

Both Holliday Grainger and Anna Paquin give it their best as, respectively, the young mother who is evicted and moves into the house of the town doctor, who has returned to take over her father’s practice. Sadly, both performers are saddled with an all-too-familiar story, one that pales in comparison to superior films featuring sexual awakening or a lesbian romance at their narrative heart, such as Celine Sciamma’s upcoming Portrait of a Lady on Fire or Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is The Warmest Colour before it.